A surprising amount of information is simply not available on the internet. Some of it was hidden behind paywalls or passwords as a form of deliberate obscurantism to lock information away from the undeserving or the underpaid; but equally many ideas had vanished from the internet or never been transcribed there at all. Despite, or perhaps
because
of the importance of Pokegirls, much of the most important information about them was not available on the internet. At least, not available in any reliable or accessible form. And so it was that where Damian would regularly do all of his reading for high-school classes online, he now found himself in the library to check out physical books about Pokegirl evolution. He wanted to upgrade Beatrice's "Girl" class to literally anything else, and the musings to be found online were somewhere between conspiratorial nonsense and just regular nonsense.
The librarian was a tall redheaded woman with a tall hairdo and tall heels, and she stood tall and straight at a tall standing desk. She had wide glasses and wide hips, and her long green dress had a deep V-neck to show the substantial depth of her cleavage without showing anything so compromising as a knee. She looked over the top of her glasses at Damian and sneered. "Nice jacket. Who shot the couch?" She turned back to her computer and continued whatever it was that she had been doing as if his presence meant nothing at all.
Damian asked for books that could describe how to evolve his Pokegirls, and after pretending to ignore him long enough that he had to ask again, the librarian broke down and directed him to a tome called
The Rules of Ruin
, which he collected and brought to a reading desk. Sitting down to read, he was struck by what a complicated system it was. The evolution of a Pokegirl's classes could affect their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their Corruption effects. But then certain directions of evolution had specific requirements that varied on the classes of the Pokegirl. Much ink was splattered in discussion of what could be done with Pathetic and Shabby Pokegirls to evolve them into the Atrocious and Beautiful, but that was not his problem and he ended up skipping and skimming quite a bit.
His reading took him down a rabbit hole almost immediately. There was a concept of
Pimping
, where some Pokegirls advanced by being shared sexually with other trainers by their trainer. The ur-example was that of the Geodame, a kind of Rock Pokegirl that did not have any arms. Evolution could add arms onto the Geodame, but only if her owner traded her sexually to another trainer. There were several kinds of Geodames: the Venus, the Caryatid, the Moai, the Colossahead, and the Bustonak; but all of them needed to be "pimped out" before they could regain the anatomically human arms they had before becoming Pokegirls. It seemed that there were lots of kinds of Pokegirls that needed to be pimped out in order to advance in some important way, but none of them were Poison Bee Girls as far as he could tell.
There were also evolutions that could be triggered by magic stones. It unfortunately wasn't as simple as a magic water stone advancing a water aspected Pokegirl. But there was apparently a mega stone for Bees that was necessary but not sufficient to grant a substantial power boost to Bee classed Pokegirls. It wasn't immediately obvious to Damian what the other part of that evolution was, the layout of the book wasn't great.
The thing he was really looking for was quite deep in the manual, and he only got there by page flipping and spot-reading. There were paths in the book to go from Girl to Artist, Sensei, Witch, or Warrior. Unfortunately, it wasn't a path, but several paths for each class. Meaning that the way a Poison Bee Girl might evolve into a Witch was different than how a Long Legs Spider Girl might evolve into a Witch. He noticed that he was already thinking of Hinako as his slave, despite not having captured her yet, and he wasn't sure whether to congratulate himself for forward planning or chastise himself for hubris. Either way, as he looked more carefully, he wasn't sure if either of the bugs could evolve into Witches by the means in the book. It looked like there was Dark Magic, Fairy Magic, Psychic Magic, and Energy Magic; with each having a different means of increasing mana by becoming a Witch rather than a Girl. Damian himself was aspected to dark magic, but Beatrice wasn't aspected to any of the kinds of magic. Other paths looked more promising. "Beatrice," he asked her, "it looks like there might be a way to make you an Artist or a Warrior. Do you have a preference?"
"Nnnnnggg." She hummed nasally while she thought it over. "I think I can be of more use to you as a Warrior." She said it with sincerity, as if that settled things. Although in Damian's opinion, she hadn't answered the question. He was going to probe deeper when two women sat down at a different desk to peruse a large blue codex together. And apparently also to gossip.
"Rush week is in three weeks. Which sorority are you going to try to join?" Despite it being a library, they weren't being especially quiet. Damian hadn't noticed any signs admonishing people to
be
quiet. The desks all had multiple chairs, which he had thought was so that students could sit with their Pokegirls, but perhaps the reading desks were places that people were
expected
to converse?
He looked over at the women, unsure of which one had spoken. Both had black hair, but one came about it from being East Asian, while the other achieved her glossy black hair through Central American heritage. They were dressed in jeans and tight shirts, which could have been outfits chosen for casual comfort or to go out dancing at a hip hop or country western club. "That's not how it works. All four sororities interview you
together
, and then any that want you send a bid." It was the Asian woman who was lecturing, indicating the other woman must have asked the question. "Each day of rush week, you talk to members of each sorority and they give you tests or make you do presentations, and a certain number of women get invited back to the next day. On the last day, each sorority separately decides whether you'd be a good fit or not. If you impress everyone, you might get four invites, but you might get only one or two. Or none at all. And you might not get the one you want."
Damian did his best to ignore the talking women.
He
had no intention of rushing a sorority. But he also had schoolwork to do, so he handed
The Rules of Ruin
to Beatrice and took the Tough Core textbook out of his bag. It was quite heavy, probably needlessly so. The syllabus wanted them reading ten chapters per week, which sounded insane until he realized that a "chapter" was generally only three pages long,
and
